School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Highfields School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 96 families who named Highfields School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 271 and 346 put it first.

Below: what an appeal in Wolverhampton actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 12 years of official figures.

1.28

first choices for every place available

346 first preferences for 271 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Highfields School

There is no published appeal success rate for Highfields School, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Wolverhampton as a whole and cover every state-funded school in the authority. Anyone quoting you odds for a named school is making them up.

Across Wolverhampton, 10.4% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 133 of 1,282 appeals heard in 2024–2026. The England figure is 20.1%.

A panel is not deciding whether you want the school. It decides whether the admission arrangements were lawful and correctly applied, and then whether the harm to your child of not being admitted outweighs the harm to the school of going over its published number. Cases built on preference rather than on those two questions are the ones that fail.

See the full appeal figures for Wolverhampton.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Wolverhampton ones. Whichever school you are appealing for, the panel works through the same two stages and is required to ignore the same things.

How contested this school has been

Highfields School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Highfields School, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 1.21 per place 282 first choices 234 places 2016/17 1.42 per place 354 first choices 250 places 2017/18 1.2 per place 298 first choices 249 places 2018/19 1.41 per place 345 first choices 244 places 2019/20 1.31 per place 359 first choices 275 places 2020/21 1.17 per place 323 first choices 277 places 2021/22 1.21 per place 333 first choices 275 places 2022/23 1.29 per place 351 first choices 273 places 2023/24 1.26 per place 343 first choices 273 places 2024/25 1.27 per place 352 first choices 277 places 2025/26 1.48 per place 395 first choices 266 places 2026/27 1.28 per place 346 first choices 271 places
First preferences per place at Highfields School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 346 first preferences for 271 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Highfields School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 234 282 210 1.21
2016/17 250 354 231 1.42
2017/18 249 298 212 1.2
2018/19 244 345 198 1.41
2019/20 275 359 242 1.31
2020/21 277 323 247 1.17
2021/22 275 333 243 1.21
2022/23 273 351 248 1.29
2023/24 273 343 253 1.26
2024/25 277 352 252 1.27
2025/26 266 395 251 1.48
2026/27 271 346 250 1.28

Places offered

271

in 2026/27

Named first choice

346

825 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

72.3%

250 of 346

Offers to families outside the council

4%

12 of 271 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 104386.

Was the school full?

This is the question a panel spends most of its time on. At the second stage of an appeal it weighs the harm to the school of taking an extra child against the harm to your child of being refused — and how much room the school has is the heart of that. The admission authority has to show harm over and above the fact that its published number has been reached, so it is fair to ask what the specific harm is — how the second stage actually works.

Places, Years 7 to 11

1,400

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,400

100% of capacity

Unfilled places

0

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

391

excluded from the figures above

Read this before you use these numbers

These are whole-school figures across Years 7 to 11, not the year group you are appealing for. A school can hold spare places in its upper years while the year you want is genuinely full, and the panel will have the year-group numbers in front of it. So this does not show that Highfields School has room for your child.

They are also the school's own reported capacity, as at 1 May 2025 — a year behind the application figures further up this page, and a description rather than a finding.

On the published figures Highfields School was at or beyond its stated capacity across Years 7 to 11. A school in that position has a straightforward case that another admission would cause it difficulty, and an appeal here has to succeed on the strength of your child's own circumstances rather than on spare room.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Highfields School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 900 1,800 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,437 places 1,484 on roll 2010/11 1,437 places 1,502 on roll 2011/12 1,437 places 1,496 on roll 2012/13 1,437 places 1,508 on roll 2013/14 1,592 places 1,530 on roll 2014/15 1,521 places 1,512 on roll 2015/16 1,592 places 1,515 on roll 2016/17 1,592 places 1,505 on roll 2017/18 1,592 places 1,526 on roll 2018/19 1,592 places 1,564 on roll 2020/21 1,592 places 1,601 on roll 2021/22 1,658 places 1,666 on roll 2022/23 1,592 places 1,681 on roll 2023/24 1,791 places 1,732 on roll 2024/25 1,791 places 1,781 on roll
Whole-school figures including any sixth form, as at 1 May each year. 2019/20 is missing because the 2020 School Capacity survey was cancelled.

Department for Education, School capacity, school-level file, 2024/25. Published under the Open Government Licence.

What these figures do not tell you

About the school

Type
Academy converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Wolverhampton

Postcode WV4 4NT. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 142317).

Other contested secondary schools in Wolverhampton

Applications and offers: Department for Education, Primary and secondary school applications and offers, school-level file, 2026/27. Appeal figures: Admission appeals in England. Both under the Open Government Licence.